Seattle Axes Monorail Project 524
Sokie writes "This afternoon the Seattle City Council passed a resolution advocating the terminiation of the Seattle Monorail Project. This follows a recent recommendation by the mayor that the project be scrapped. Lacking city support, the project looks to be dead and the city council will request that the state legislature formally terminate the project during their next session. City councilman Richard Conlin noted that the $1 million per week tax collection required by the SMP would be enough to eliminate fares on the city's bus network."
Monorail! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Monorail! (Score:4, Interesting)
Monorail... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that the monorail was a good idea.
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cities just aren't cost effective.
This is a big problem in california where there is so many huge cities (60 over 100,000 people) and not a much rural population.
Far as this, well a mono-rail screams money pit. But thats not to say mass transit is bad. If a mass transit system is done right it will be a boon to the area. Since construction of freeways and other roadways can be scaled back. Even when running in debt, a proper mass transit system is much cheaper then continually building more freeways, high way, and repairing them, expanding them.
Unfortunently most good forms of mass transit (trains, subways, trolleys, pedestrian/biker only pathways) get way under funded and under designed so they don't cover enough area to be worthwhile. I always love how city boards cut such projects back so hard, so then the rail system becomes a 3 mile stretch to no where, and then people attack mass transit for being a waste.
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Informative)
Cities, due to their density have much lower tranportation costs. It is much cheaper, per person, to get water and gas services to a single apartment building than 100 rural farms, or even 100 suburban homes. Virtually anything done in a city is cheaper per person than it is in rural areas.
Urban taxes pay for the network of roads and highways that make suburbs possible. Urban taxes pay the farm subsidizes. Urban taxes pay for public transit outside of cities. Urban taxes pay for rural schools and hospitals.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/gastaxlosers/analysis.p hp [ewg.org] v erview.htm [usda.gov] c le/2005/07/05/AR2005070500594.html [washingtonpost.com] . html [blueoregon.com]
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Infrastructure/o
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
http://www.techliberation.com/archives/015244.php [techliberation.com]
http://www.blueoregon.com/2005/03/joined_at_the_h
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rural areas have fewer transportation needs than cities which means the transportation costs are considerably lower. Fewer roads, fewer streetlights, fewer traffic lights, fewer collisions...
Who needs a larger police force - the 600,000 people in Washington, DC or the 600,000 people in North Dakota? Who has a greater need for firemen and paramedics - 900,000 people in San Jose or 900,000 people in Montana?
That's why farms use wells and propane.
Municipal services? What is the cost per person of salaries of city employees alone in New York City vs the the metric for residents of Wyoming?
Nope... ever see the tax rates of suburban houses spike to pay for the new influx?
Nope... federal.
How many times have you caught the bus in rural Idaho?
Federal again. And local. And rural education is much cheaper than urban because:
a) the land for the schools is much cheaper
b) with fewer students you need smaller buildings - energy efficiency is easier to achieve
c) Not nearly as many administrators or lunchlady Dorris overhead
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Informative)
Er... where do you think federal taxes come from?
Re:Monorail... (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore, you have to agree that it is certainly more efficient to provide emergency services to a large city, even if it is more expensive. A large city may have one or two police forces, while in rural areas every city and county has their own little fifedoms. Compare the official response to 9/11 versus Katrina (NYC: Mayor's in charge. LA: Noobody's in charge.)
But, if you actually broke out the numbers, it probably boils down to how you define "urban". An urbanite may see the exurban suburbs (usually created with massive transportaion and utility investment) as "rural", while an authentic farmer would probably see them as "urban".
Re:Monorail... (Score:4, Insightful)
When you compare the total costs of a single town of 5,000 to another single town of 1,000,000, then and only then you are correct. However, if you break those costs out per person, then you are incorrect.
As for the fewer roads argument, that is just false. If you spread a million people into 200 towns of 5,000 people each with a distance of 30 miles between each town, then you are going to spend a fortune creating a network of roads to connect all these people together. You'll end up spending far more than if those million people lived close together such as in a large city.
Who needs a larger police force - the 600,000 people in Washington, DC or the 600,000 people in North Dakota? Who has a greater need for firemen and paramedics - 900,000 people in San Jose or 900,000 people in Montana?
It is far cheaper to provide services to a million people if those people live close together. If you break those people up into towns of 5,000 and spread them apart by 30 miles each, then it is far more expensive to provide those services. That's because you have to pay the initial fixed cost for 200 separate police departments, sheriff departments, fire departments, etc, etc. A large city pays those same fixed costs, but spreads the costs over their entire population. On top of that, large cities can then get by with 1-2 police officers or fire fighters per 5,000 residents. However, no town the size of 5,000 people could get by with only 1-2 fire fighters. Look up economies of scale.
That's why farms use wells and propane.
But then you need people to drill the wells and service the pumps. Those people and their equipment cost money. And you probably need at least one in each of those towns of 5,000. So, that's at least an additional 200 people and their equipment you have to pay.
As for the propane, you need a network to get the propane out to people. Large trucks can get the propane out to individuals. Well, those trucks come from a central location nearby. Assuming that they're not from the big city, then you have a hub out in the middle of nowhere. Which means, you have to spend the big money to build a pipeline out to the middle of nowhere. That all costs big money, which they're not going to get from the few people they service.
Prev: Virtually anything done in a city is cheaper per person than it is in rural areas.
You: Municipal services? What is the cost per person of salaries of city employees alone in New York City vs the the metric for residents of Wyoming?
You're comparing the most expensive cost of living (NYC) versus one of the least expensive cost of living (Wyoming). As such, your example is not correct given that their salaries are based on the cost of living versus percentage of income paid to municipal services. On an absolute basis, New Yorkers may pay more per person than someone in Wyoming for the same municipal services. But then, New Yorkers pay more for everything than people in Wyoming. But, if you look at the percentage of income paid to municipal services of New Yorkers versus residents of Wyoming, the people of Wyoming probably pay more.
If you want to bring up that kind of argument, then I should point out that those municipal workers in New York are also paying more in taxes than people in rural areas. That's simply a result of them getting paid a higher salary.
Removing the cost of living argument, then it is always cheaper to provide services to people clustered together rather than spread apart.
Prev: Urban taxes pay for the network of roads and highways that make suburbs possible.
You: Nope... ever see the tax rates of suburban houses spike to pay for the new influx?
Re:Monorail... (Score:3)
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Interesting)
You might say that subsidies ensure a stable domestic food supply, which is a strategic necessity. I wouldn't argue against that, but I can hardly see how you expect us to believe that farm subsidies help the consumer at the expense of the farmer. Clearly the opposite is true.
Re:Monorail... (Score:4, Interesting)
ag subsidies (Score:4, Interesting)
Farms therefore have incentive to overproduce, as evidenced by commodity prices (especially grains like corn, wheat, and soybeans) frequently selling below cost. Farmers narrow their losses, or even gain a profit, by producing more efficiently. So the motivation to be efficient is intact. Large farms get more subsidy and leverage economies of scale that allow them to produce more effieiently, thus the trend towards farm consolidation.
Because food prices are driven low by overproduction through subsidy, food is economically available to more people. The wealthy are gonna be able to afford food anyway. The "wealth redistribution" to which you refer is not so much from the government to the farmer as it is from the wealthy to the poor.
UI
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Informative)
The cost of the actual hardware - trains, tracks, stations - isn't so much the issue here as the endless meetings, the bureaucracy.
Being on the monorail planning board became a job for a lot of people, and you've got to wonder how motivated somebody is to get something done when ultimately they'll be out of a job when it's done!
It looks to me like these particular bureaucrats did a great job. They strung it out as l
Re:Monorail... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a fiction that a lot of Seattlelites like to believe. If you actually look at the distribution of tax intake around Washington state, you'll find it's the suburbs that are bearing the brunt of the tax burden. While our state's businesses like to complain about needing tax relief, their tax load is quite light when compared to that of the state's individual taxpayers.
I for one am glad to see the monorail die. We don't need a bunch of half-*ssed transit systems - we need one overarching system that actually meets the Puget Sound region's needs (note: not just Seattle's).
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you actually look at the distribution of tax intake around Washington state, you'll find it's the suburbs that are bearing the brunt of the tax burden.
Part of that's because we have places like Medina and Chilton hill or whatever, where houses start at around a million and driving a car made before 2000 is a ticketable offense. Seattle has a lot of poor/industrial areas, but that's changing as the city recovers from whatever knocked it on its ass in the 70s (new resident myself).
One thing worth men
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Informative)
If you didn't live in or near either of these destinations the chances are you'd never use the system, or even see it for that matter.
There is, however, a light rail system in the process of actually b
Re:Monorail... (Score:3, Funny)
Was there a chance the track could bend?
Re:Monorail... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Monorail... (Score:2)
OB: Simpson's (Score:3, Funny)
I told them already it's more of a Shelbyville idea!
Re:OB: Simpson's (Score:5, Funny)
from the more-of-a-shelbyville-kind-of-idea dept.
Not suprising (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not suprising (Score:5, Informative)
Sound transit is Garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that really 'just fine'?
Standard guage rail is MUCH better use of $ (Score:5, Interesting)
The technology has been heavily debugged over 1 1/2 centuries. The important components are in mass production. (Even custom rolling stock - if built in the standard way - gets much of the cost and functionality benefit.)
Standard guage also lets the line use heavy rail rights-of-way opportunistically - with no or only minor upgrades if the stock is self-powered, relatively minor upgrades if trolley or third-rail power must be added. Old rights-of-way are the right width and can be reactivated or re-railed. City streets ditto: You can put standard guage down a freeway median, convert a lane or two of an existing street or closed-to-traffic pedestrian mall, or even run rails IN a street and share the lane with vehicular traffic. You can bring intercity passenger lines to the same stations and platforms as your intra-city mass transit. In an industrial area or over bridges you can also do shared projects with freight lines.
Each of these factors can produce savings in the tens-of-millions to multiple billions ranges, both for the mass transit projects and sometimes for heavy rail partners.
Contrast that to non-standard systems:
BART: Deliberately designed with a non-standard guage track (using concrete railbed so it can't be changed later) so it could never be shared with freight. Custom cars designed by aeronautical engineers - whose expertese with aerodynamics and structure relates more to free-space flight than rolling rapidly on a surface within inches of structures, and whose experience with ROLLING involves only rubber-shod landing gear used for only minutes per flight at any speed greater than a crawl. Result: Abysmal ride. Cars with a replacement cost of $6 million EACH, currently only available from a manufacturer in France. No opportunity to share right-of-way with anything: Expansion requires purchase (or siezure) of a string of contiguous lots through the San Francisco Bay Area - perhaps still the most expensive real estate in the US.
Amtrack made the aeronautical-engineer new-design mistake on one generation of their passenger rolling stock, with similar results.
People-mover: A rubber-tired horizontal elevator. A dreadfully expensive toy for inner city entertainment/business districts. Useful mainly for inter-terminal transport in airports. Like Bart, the right-of-way can't be shared with anything.
Monorails also can't share their trackage with other services, or recycle existing structures (other than the space over existing rights-of-way such as freeway medians - and even there the supporting structures consume ground space). So you have to build the entire line and pay for the whole thing out of the project - making the fees you must charge (or the taxes you must steal) prohibitively high. The main advantage over railroads is their relative quiet and their lack of interference with traffic at crossings.
(I could go on with bullet trains and other inter-urban items, and comparison with air and water transit. But this thread is about urban mass transit.) Main point is that, for urban mass transit, standard guage rail for the long hops is a better deal than monorail or the other alternatives.
With one exception: The private automobile is usually a far better price/performance tradeoff than even trains or busses - even if you don't count the costs of lost passenger time from waiting for scheduled runs or transfer connections, or taking a non-optimal route due to lack of availability of a direct run. Even in those cities where the transit system is pervasive enough that it beats cars for some trips, there are always plenty of others where a private car beats the pants off public transportation on a cost/ride basis. A car goes from where you are to where you want to be, with many convenient route options, at a very low cost per mile traveled (even counting the cost of
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
Is yours the fourth or the fifth?
Re:Hmm (Score:2)
In all seriousness though, there is hardly any original comedy anymore. A lot of comedy (and good comedy at that) is taking well known situations or jokes and referencing them in obscure ways.
Being a huge Simpsons fan, I love seeing Simpsons headlines on Fark or a well-made reference here on Slashdot.
Monorail fixation (Score:5, Interesting)
For some reason in the mid 50's monorails became equated with high tech, thus EPCOT and the Seattle monorail. All evidence suggests that there is nothing special about monorails. The fastest and most advanced in-use trains in Europe to this date still run on two rails.
Or is this just a case of "my monorail is bigger than yours"?
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:2)
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Insightful)
And before eulogising about "mass" transit around Aichi, we're talking about an expo that had people queuing up to 8 hours to get in, 2-5 hours at exhibits and stations. Mass transit is exactly that: move a lot of people quickly and transpar
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:5, Informative)
I can see the point of the proponents, but US transportation management does not have a good record of building expensive things now and having them operate less expensively later.
Mostly right (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, you can elevate a LRT or put it underground. In both cases, the installation costs are an easy 3-5 x the monorail costs as well as taking 5-10 the space.
In monorail, the train wraps the rail. That means that it can not jump it. In contrast, think about how many of trains that we hear have jumped the track. If you follow the news, it happens every month or so.
Monorail takes up less space in the air as the rail is about the width of a sidewalk. In contrast, the width of a suspended LRT track, is wider than a normal road. So imagine a 2 lane road suspended overhead. Load, noisey, and very expensive.
Re:Mostly right (Score:3, Informative)
- Vancouver Skytrain [trailcanada.com]
- Kuala Lumpur light rail [railway-technology.com]
- Singapore metro system [urbanrail.net]
I have seen these first hand, from my travels, and can say that they work very well without having a driver.
Re:Mostly right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked on the noise & vibration analysis for the Sound Transit light rail EIR. One of the criticisms I heard over & over again was that the city should expand the monorail system instead of building a light rail system because the monorail would be quieter.
In the case of the existing Seattle monorail, this is completely wrong - the Seattle monorail is easily one of the (if not *the*) loudest surface-transit systems in the country. If you're a resident of the pacific northwest, all you have to do is listen to the monorail, then head down to Portland to hear their light rail system (which will be similar to the proposed Seattle system), it's no contest.
[As an aside, I can tell you about the first time I head the monorail. My boss and I were sitting in a car under the monorail guideway near the Space Needle terminus. All of a sudden, I head this huge roar, and the car started to shake. I seriously thought the rapture was upon us, until my boss said "here comes the monorail." Quiet my a$$]
In any event, rubber wheels (which is what the Seattle monorail uses) moving on a concrete or steel surface certainly makes noise - otherwise highways would be quiet. Depending on the exact configuration, it's not necessarily true that rubber wheels on concrete or steel is quieter then steel wheels on steel rails since train wheels are designed to have a very small contact patch to minimize friction, and hence, noise. And don't forget the additional radiated sound you would get from the elevated monorail guideway.
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Informative)
Someone didn't get their naptime today....
The monorail board released specs on the decibels created by the new monorail. Can you comment on those?
The info from the monorail FEIS site [elevated.org] (based on measurements of the Walt Disney World monorail) indicates that the monorail (at 40 mph) is a bit quieter than "rail transit" (at 50 mph) - the specifics aren't very clear and I don't know if they're comparing apples
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Informative)
For autos above 30 mph on level roads, wheel/road noise dominates. For medium and heavy trucks, it tends to be an almost even mix of exhaust/stack noise and wheel/road noise. For trucks going uphill, (I think) engine noise dominates.
More info in the Traffic Noise Model Technical Manual [dot.gov].
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Informative)
None of which are representative of LRT. To have a better sense of light rail, go see DART [dart.org], Houston METRO [ridemetro.org], Salt Lake City UTA [rideuta.com], St. Louis Metrolink [metrostlouis.org], San Francisco MUNI [sfmuni.com], Santa Clara VTA [vta.org], Philadelphia SEPTA [septa.org], Portland Max [trimet.org], Baltimore MARC [mtamaryland.com], and so on.
Second, I'd much rather move back under the whoosh of the monorail than the clankety-clack of the el or train tracks.
Jointed tracks cause the "clickety-clack" most people a
The 'El' is not light rail! (Score:5, Informative)
I've consulted on rail transit & freight rail noise issues in 26 states, one U.S. territory, and 2 countries. My analyses have withstood scrutiny by college professors (including one nobel prize winner), other consultants, and many lawsuits. I've contributed to national rail noise standards and I've trained state officials in transit noise control on behalf of FTA. I've presented info on noise & vibration analysis at national conferences, and I have two transit noise-related papers that will be published in refereed acoustics journals over the next year.
In short, I know a lot about "how loud steel wheels on steel rails are."
For the 3rd time, the Chicago El is not light rail - the trains are longer, heavier, faster, and more frequent, all of which make them louder than typical light rail systems. I'm also willing to bet that the age and maintenance on the El is a significant contributer to its perceived loudness.
Since you live in Seattle, take a drive down to Portland and have a listen to the Portland Max LRT system. Hopefully you'll see what I'm talking about.
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:5, Interesting)
First, a number of people here look at the monorail as a symbol of the city. We've already got one that runs a short distance from Paul Alen's EMP to the city core. It's pretty cool. A lot of people feel that we should extend the line that runs only a few blocks into one that spans the city. I happen to be one of these people. Springfield and the monorail song aside, building monorail is cheaper per mile than the light rail solution that's currently under way here too. I seem to recall that building monorail is 1/10 the cost per mile. I also know that large sections of this can be built off site and transported to the final location when it's convenient. In this way, the disruption to the people of the city is minimized in a way that it cannot be with light rail.
Second, and most importantly, we (the city) have voted by popular referendum 4 TIMES to have the monorail. Each time, large property holders in conjunction with the paid-off officials in the city government have waged a fierce battle to prevent this. They don't want the competition, they don't want their views blocked, the proposed route doesn't help them with their gentrification plan like the already started light rail plan does. I want to emphasize that..... FOUR TIMES we've voted to create the monorail.... FOUR times the city officials have attempted to block the project in favor of their light rail solution that's more expensive and more disruptive, but puts more money in the pockets of local developers. Someone above mentioned that we've already spent too much money on our sports statiums.... That's true, and also a little bit of a sore spot for me... Through popular referendum, the people REJECTED the stadiums twice... They were built anyway, against the will of the people, to support greedy team owners, leaving us with almost $100 million in debt on the old Kingdome which was torn down. Think of that again, we still owe money on a building that's been demolished so that we can build another new statium for the rich sports team owners...
Third, building the monorail allows for outside bidding on almost all of the project. I think that this is the clincher for why the city and state are opposed to the project though. When working at "grade" level, the city and state department of transportation groups get a cut of the project. I think that they're required to be in on the project, therefore they get the federal dollars into their budgets. For projects that go underground or above ground, they can be effectively eliminated from the project in favor of private companies which specialize in either tunneling or monorail building. For most projects, the city and state will fight tooth & nail to keep the project "at grade" rather than allow tunneling or a solution like the monorail. It's all about budgets and power. We're getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government right now to build our light rail project. It will be over 10 years of work and will be mostly at street level. I think the overall budget for the 14 mile light rail project is something like $2.4 Billion. The city officials love it.... You couldn't kill the light rail project any more than you could kill the "big dig" in Boston... It's all about pork.... That's exactly why I like the monorail and hate the light rail. Light rail is going to be 10 times more expensive and doesn't even span a major traffic route! Nothing's getting solved here in Seattle by building it and nobody's going to use it. Property developers are quickly snapping up properties along the route, gentrifying the poor neighborhoods that they placed the route in, they're going to make a killing... It's a boondoggle, plain and simple, and the monorail is competing with it, therefore they think the monorail must die.
In short, look for the monorail to win a record FIFTH public referendum, after which the mayor will attempt to find another way to block and/or delay the project. I hope the people here will not let this die..
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:5, Informative)
I seem to recall that building monorail is 1/10 the cost per mile.
Monorail: $11.4 billion / 14 miles (SMP's June financing plan, see this Seattle P-I article [nwsource.com])
Light rail: $2.4 billion / 14 miles (your figures, corroborated by Sound Transit [soundtransit.org])
So
And how does the light rail line, which runs along I-5, not "span a major traffic route"? Do you really think that nobody in Rainier Valley or Tukwila needs to commute to downtown Seattle, or that nobody needs to get to or from the airports?
And those four times we voted for the monorail? That was before anybody knew that the monorail officials were planning on paying for the line by selling 50-year junk bonds.
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Interesting)
1st:
"Do you really think that nobody in Rainier Valley or Tukwila needs to commute to downtown Seattle, or that nobody needs to get to or from the airports?
Light rail's route through the Rainier Valley and Tukwilla is about gentrification, not transit. Not enough people need to make that commute to make either solution cost effective, neither monorail or light rail. People in the Rainier Valley and Tukw
Re:Monorail fixation (Score:3, Insightful)
You're absolutely right. The problem with these kinds of projects is that it preys on the general cluelessness of the masses. This is the thought process I think most people go through:
-There is a traffic problem -Something must be done to fix the traffic problem -The monorail is indeed "something" and carries people -The monorail will therefore fix the traffic problem
Ev
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seattle's downtown doesn't need one (Score:4, Insightful)
New York would need one, if it weren't for the subway. I bet the council got the idea for a monorail from watching Batman Begins. They saw Gotham City had one, and wanted one too.
Sorry I don't have a Simpsons joke to share. So my work here is done.
Re:Seattle's downtown doesn't need one (Score:2)
Presently, all their mass transit is just buses. Some form of rail would be desirable. The city's been trying to get trains for ages; the monorail is actually a citizen initiative. The reason for it being a monorail, btw, is because there already is one in Seattle, it's just not very useful since it doesn't go far.
What they could really use out there, however, is a rail link from downtown Bellevue (which is fairly central for the East Side) to Seattle. With only two bridges acro
Re:New York DOES have a monorail (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually a little more complicated than that (Score:5, Informative)
Once the city council backed the mayor to withdraw support, the monoral project was forced to put a measure on the upcoming November ballot so Seattle citizens can vote a fifth time on the monorail project. This time they're being offered the option of a 10-mile long route (as opposed to the original 14-mile route) that would (only) cost $5B. This whole mess started when it was discovered that the original route would wind up costing $11B to build.
The Seattle PI had a good article [nwsource.com] on the latest developments in the paper yesterday.
Doesn't sound dead to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA:
Monorail board approves ballot measure
By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter
The Seattle Monorail Project board has just approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the proposed line, and run it from the Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay.
The decision to send a ballot measure to voters came hours after the Seattle City Council agreed to advocate for the termination of the financially troubled monorail plan. Last night, monorail board members rejected putting forward a ballot measure or any plan to shorten the line. Mayor Greg Nickels had pushed hard for both.
"It's time for the people to decide whether they want to save the people's train," said Kristina Hill, SMP board chair.
The City Council today, in supporting Nickels' denial of street-use permits for the project, expressed frustration and anger at SMP's handling of the situation and refusal to come up with a ballot measure last night. They said they would ask the Legislature, which created the monorail agency, to dissolve it.
The deadline to submit a ballot measure is 4:30 p.m. today.
The trim to the planned 14-mile line would cut about $250 million from the $1.64 billion construction contract -- if the contracting team sticks with the project.
Pat Flaherty, president of the Cascadia team, said today his team doesn't want to keep working on the Seattle monorail unless the City Council and Nickels reverse course and actively support the ballot measure.
Re:Doesn't sound dead to me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh well, c'est la vie.
Gotta wonder if the submitter read the article (Score:2, Informative)
2) The city council agreed to advocate terminating the project.
It's certainly not dead yet, but it's not looking good. It looks like the shortening was a last ditch effort to keep it alive.
It's really sad too. Seattle badly needs a train system. They have busses, but a good train would help a lot. For myself, that's one reason I prefer to go to Portland if I have the choice (abou
good (Score:3, Informative)
-Sean (OutdoorDB [outdoordb.org]) - The Outdoor Wiki
Re:good (Score:2)
1. They already had light rail (Trolley system), and removed it. In fact, I bet at some point it is going to cost money to move the equipment that is under the street. See this image of the counter balance, for example [historylink.org].
2. Due to the fire and sewage problems, Seattle actually raised ground level of downtown up one story to bury their problems. For a period of time, store fronts were underground, and people used ladders to reach them!
3. Seattle actually spe
Public Transit is Critical (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Toronto resident I can get by without a car, just about anywhere in this city, even most of the outlying regions, can be reached quickly via rail (and sometimes a connecting bus), its not perfect, but most times my transit time is less than 30 minutes. When I visit New York City its even better, a GREAT public transit system.
Yet if I visit Jacksonville, Housten, Atlanta (hell just about anywhere in the south) I HAVE to rent a car, public transit is poor or non-existant. Yet they wonder why they have smog issues, and traffic congestion? Ever wonder what the south would be like if they had rail? They can't build subways (water table issue) but a monorail or just plain old above ground rail system would go a long way to improving their quality of life. Oil prices too high? Take the train, its cheaper.
Re:Public Transit is Critical (Score:3, Interesting)
History and race (Score:2)
When the busses desegregated, whites said, "Screw it, I'll just drive."
Such overt racism is not practiced anymore, of course. And most black people have cars. B
Re:Public Transit is Critical (Score:3, Interesting)
As some one who lives in the Atlanta area and who lived downtown a couple of years ago, I whole heartedly agree. When I was downtown, it was so nice to get on the MARTA to go to work. If you live inside the perimeter, and by a train stattion, it's not too bad, but still nowhere near European cities or New York.
I really wish we would put more money into to syste
Re:Public Transit is Critical (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a common myth. There's no reason the cities you mention in the southern United States can't have subways. Look at Amsterdam, which is below sea level, yet still has a subway system.
In fact, Houston has auto tunnels running beneath the Houston Ship Channel (one active, one decommissioned), but somehow people there think they can't have a subway line. It's just small-town thinking in a large city.
Re:Public Transit is Critical (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent compared to nothing at all, maybe.
I live on Queen Anne. If I want to go to the U District, it takes an *hour* by bus, or ten minutes by car.
I work near REI in downtown. The bus to there only runs every 30 minutes, is frequently late, and is so slow that during rush-hour traffic it's actually faster for me to walk.
Years ago I dated a girl who lived in Bellevue, and it took me almost two hours to get there on the bus. TWO HOURS. I could be in
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is this a case? (Score:2)
Fair enough, and probably a good thing: the vote to start the monorail did get Sound Transit off its duff and actually building things. However, the vote happened before Seattlites began learning just how expensive the SMP was going to be. Surprise, surprise -- there were huge overruns, there
I hope they like driving... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hope they like driving... (Score:2)
A lack of public transportation is supposed to inhibit a city's growth, and yet people keep coming to this area. The Ventura-Los Angeles-Orange County metroplex still has people virtually flooding into it.
Obligatory Simpsons video (Score:3, Informative)
From one of my previous comments:
Firefox Users: If the WMV doesn't work, try going tools, options, downloads, and on the bottom right click plugins, uncheck wmv, and if you don't want pdfs opening in firefox (meaning download first THEN open, I prefer this method, always faster and more stable) then uncheck pdf and anything else you don't want opening in firefox
In other news... (Score:2)
Not exactly accurate.... (Score:2, Informative)
A measure will be on the Nov8th ballot authorizing the project to build a slightly shorter line instead of the original 14mile plan. If the voters approve that measure, things start moving again (hopefully with strong support from the city government).
Note that the regional transit agency (SoundTransit) made a verbal promiss when we approved their tax. They ended up deciding to produce a much shorter line. Hopefully people will remember that.
I am new to Seattle, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Costs of Seattle Monorail were too high (Score:2, Interesting)
Third cancellation's the charm? (Score:3, Informative)
Reading the article, it sounds like more of the same old "it can't possible work here" syndrome that infects every Seattle public work. I've been out of Seattle for a couple years -- has the light rail laid one section of track, yet? Both the monorail and the light rail projects for the region have been in development hell for at least 10 years, with seemingly no progress made. The excuse I remember hearing most often was that the Puget sound region was so different from anywhere else in the world that light rail / monorail works.
Most ill-conceived project, ever (Score:5, Interesting)
The project is complete lunacy since the stations have no provision for parking/park and ride, and the route follows an existing bus line and would not be any faster than that bus line. And it would cost more per ride.
I could support it if they actually tried something innovative, like the Skyweb Express [slashdot.org], but as the project stands, it's just a solution looking for a problem.
I am part of the small minority of Seattlites whose home and work are in walking distance of the originally proposed line, and I can't see any reason to choose it, since it would cost me more to ride it than driving to work and paying for parking.
Re:what is the point of mass transit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Deciding to go for a surface train vs tunnel or elevated is purely an economic decision. Surface is always cheapest, and it is generally the best decision where ridership (or population density) for the region cannot overcome the additional cost of a dedicated right-of-way.
Personally, I much prefer elevated systems to tunnels. Not much to see in a tunnel, and it takes additional effort to maintain communications
Scrapped? The article didn't say that. (Score:3, Informative)
The Seattle Monorail Project board has just approved a Nov. 8 ballot measure to shorten the proposed line, and run it from the Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay.
Another day another story posted with a summary that can only be described as completely wrong.
Reading the summary did make me laugh though, when I left Seattle for a real city (SF) back in 2001, the Monorail project had already been started up and construction had commenced. So if they pull out now, they could very well end up having a several hundred million dollar infrastructure sitting there to rot -- and rotting quite promenently as they situated it through very busy streets.
But it might be possible that by shortening the scope of work, the contractors would pull out. And then the Monorail project could very well be as good as dead.
Personally, while I thought the monorail project was cool, I never really understood why the hell they needed it. They already have a top-notch bus system and the idea of extending the 1962 Worlds Fair Monorail [imdb.com] into a city wide service seems rather superflous.
Public support (Score:2)
Why Seattle Needed the Monorail (Score:5, Interesting)
With Monorail, all you need to do is clear a path. Buy out business along the green line, no tunneling is involed. Plus im told that monorail can be converted to handle a maglev type of transportation. It was originally supposed to cost under 2 billion, but people didnt like the tax and decided to register their cars outside of KingCounty. This caused a severe drop in revene and prompted the monorail execs to resort to drastic funding (junk bonds, high intrest loans, etc) to the point where its going to cost over 10 billion.
We need the monorail (or some form of elevated transportation) because there isnt enough room to build more highways. The sucess of the monorail would have helped to extend it to other areas of King County such as Redmond or Tacoma. I used to temp at Microsoft, and getting to Redmond from Seattle wasnt really a problem, but getting home sure was a nightmare. Any minor problem, and your going to see backups.
King County citizens voted in favor for the monorail 5 times! And yet, its never gonna be built. Its beyond surreal.
Christ on a stick! (Score:4, Informative)
We also voted no on a new stadium, twice.
The Biggest Obstacale to Mass Transit ... Suburbia (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason I suspect is that "old world" cities are far better suited for mass transit in the first place. Cities like New York, Boston and European cities were developed when transportation mostly consisted of walking. As a result, these cities tended to emphasize a "build up, not out" approach to development resulting in more compact cities realtive to their size.
Then came the concept of Suburbia....country living for everyone. Automobiles became affordable and cities started to sprawl. Now you have cities like Atlanta, LA, etc who occupy a far larger land area relative to their population then older cities. This means that building a mass transit network becomes far more expensive to build and maintain. It also means that unless it's a fairly comprehensive network (even more expensive) it's ridership will be relatively low.
This is best evidenced by the New York Metro Area. Mass Transit in manhattan is exceptional...you can get just about everywhere you want to go. Access in brooklyn and queens where building densities are lower isn't quite as good as manhattan, but is still pretty good. Transit access out on long island (which was developed with cars in mind) is good for going to and from Manhattan, but poor going everywhere else.
Now sure, there's no technological reason we couldn't build a comprehensive subway system out on Long Island, but low ridership compared to operating and construction costs would make it economicly unfeasable. All we can do is identify a few major routes along which rail lines would ease congestion on the highways. I imagine it's much the same for an Atlanta or LA.
-Chris
I would use mass transit (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I love driving and own a 5spd and do most of my own car work, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to get drunk at a bar, stumble onto a train and get off only a block or two from your apartment.
Atlanta has a rail and subway system, Marta, but it doesn't really blanket the city all that well. I have a friend who lives down there and it's a 20 minute drive to work, even in the thick traffic, and 45 minute train ride with two transfers.
I really wish the rail era in this country didn't die the way it did. It would have been nice during the Interstate construction , if they had placed two high speed rail tracks in the median. I realize the Interstates were designed to move troops and also be used as a stage to land airplanes, but I think both could have still been accomplished with an integrated rail system.
I like the way Chicago's rail system is setup. Their rails run in the medians in the Interstate and they even have train stations in the medians with pedestrian bridges above them connecting them to the streets.
A good mass transit system (keyword good; well designed) with a fair ticket price or monthly passes is a really great way to help reduce pollution, unclog traffic ways and it lets you read a book or play with your laptop on the way to work. The trouble is we're a country conditioned to use cars and we like control, so many people will continue to drive those gas hogging SUVs with just themselves and five empty seats on the 20min drive to work every morning.
Sumit
Monorail?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Las Vegas at the moment and they put up a monorail last year... nothing but headaches.
BART in the San Francisco area is pretty darn good. It reminds me of the trains in Europe -- both England and France have excellent rail systems. Fast, quiet, smooth and reasonably priced for the most part.
Anyways... I've never heard why people keep building monorails. Is there some theoretical advantage that has yet to be realized?
Take a stand against the taxation! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:taxation never drops (Score:3, Informative)
The only roads free markets will build are toll roads. If not, then the full costs of land, construction and maintenance of road and parking facilites would have to be billed on auto users, simplest perhaps as a gasoline tax, which would be unfair, but encourage fuel efficiency.
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, historically it was the Detroit auto industry which did sabotage many light-rail and metro systems throughout the US, in cities which were growing in the early 20th century, such as Atlanta and Los Angeles. How did they do it?
By donating buses whenever a municipality began planning rail, and thus encouraging those cities to pave more roads (and create a market for cars.)
Evil? Not per se. Blindly self-interested with bad long-term consequences, such as sprawl? I think so.
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:4, Interesting)
They also flat out BRIBED city council members to do this. They infiltrated planning commissions and spent hundreds of thousands of Dollars on propaganda against building such systems all over the country.
Seattle had a wonderful, well managed mass transit system. It was called the Interurban railway. It covered everything from Puyallup and Tacoma to Seattle, the surrounding environs and even went up to Everett. You could hop a train for a dime in West Seattle, and be in Bothell in an hour and a half. It ran well for 25 years or so, then the Automobile manufacturers had several well-financed auto company freindly people elected to the City Council here in Seattle. That Council, along with the Mayor, suddenly decided that the system should be privatized after the market Crash in 1929. The purchaser? General Motors. They promptly stopped maintaining the track, the cars and the whole system altogether. It was shut down within three years after that sale.
This is not tinfoil hat stuff as you Nazis like to say, it was pure government corruption at the City and county levels. Its all pretty well documented. Seattle mass transit is a joke now. Hop a bus in Bothell for two bucks, and it takes three hours to get to West Seattle. Thats three bus changes, at $1.75 each. Its cheaper to drive even at todays gasoline prices. And it only takes a half hour.
I live a ten minuite walk from a freeway bus access station, what we call a Park n ride, and I would still need over two hours to get to my work on Spokane Street. Thats 17 miles. Buses dont run early enough for me to get to work on time, riding that system. I would have to get out of bed at 2 AM and be on a bus by 3:30 to be at work by 7, including walking 2 miles. After work, walk a mile (15 mins) hop a short bus ride to downtown, wait 20 minuites, hop another bus to the Central north side bus terminal at Northgate Mall, wait another 20 minuites, hop another bus to the park n Ride near my house. That gets me home a little after 6 pm. I have other things to do with my life than ride a stinking crappy bus with a bunch of other unhappy tired people all day. It is in fact, cheaper to drive. 20 minuites gets me to work on a good day, if traffic is snarled for whatever reason, that doubles. And its still cheaper.
Blow that smoke up someone elses ass. the so-called "conservatives" in this country have always represented the interests of the wealthiest corporations, actively work against anti-corruption laws and encourage corruption in local governments like the City Council and Mayors office. They do this all over the country.
I supported the Seattle Monorail. Then the monorail commission, stocked with former automobile executives and a couple tolken "liberals" estimated the total cost of the project at $1.1 BILLION a mile. So it was obvious from the start that the system was not ever intended to be built, and the project managers would do anything to prevent it from being built including exaggerating the total cost to the point where all the conservative sheep would start wringing their hands. Then they wouldn't allow anyone (meaning the public) to know how the money was to actually be spent.
We can build an nuclear powered, state of the art aircraft carrier for the price of each mile of that project.
I guess that corruption of the type I described above still exists.
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh come on. That is just bullshit. You think no one ever thought about the long-term view 50 years ago? Sure they did. However, these people were:
a) frequently ignored (as they are today)
b) frequently wrong (predicting the future is an inexact science)
-a
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pressure from oil interests? (Score:2)
1)Starbucks: Fine, I tell Starbucks they can set up Espresso stands in each Monorail car and station. Problem solved
2)Microsoft: Funny you'd think I'd be on my Laptop more using Microsoft applications when not distracted by needing to drive.
3) Boeing: HUH?? When do people fly from one side of Seattle to another?
Re:Speaking of that (Score:2)
Rail's great, hell, I was just on the Shanghai maglev last weekend, but Amtrak is a JOKE.
Re:Might as well get it over with... (Score:2)
It glides as softly as a cloud.
Re:they dont make money... (Score:3, Funny)
I was in Las Vegas a few months ago and used the monorail to travel up and down the strip.
The monorail is about a half-block away from the strip. To get to a station, you have to navigate through the casinos and shops, which are designed to impede your progress (so you'll gamble or spend money). We stayed at the Venetian, which doesn't have it's own
Re:What did Frasier Crane get stuck in? (Score:3, Informative)
It's about 1 mile long and only goes from the north end of down town a short ways south, "mass transit" it isn't. It's a tourist attraction that needs a $100,000,000 woth of repairs and retrofitting.